Quick Take

• Decentralized exchange (DEX) spot volume reached an all-time high of 23.9% relative to centralized exchange (CEX) volume in July.
• Ethereum developers proposed EIP-8361 to eliminate staking rewards once staked ETH hits 50% of network supply (roughly $112 billion).
• Mastercard launched a pilot program with the Borderless.xyz network to integrate its Crypto Credential framework into cross-border stablecoin payments, focusing on stringent identity verification.
• Circle named BlackRock, Visa, and DTCC as founding validators for Arc, its upcoming permissioned Layer-1 (L1) blockchain.
• Ten European financial institutions, including ABN AMRO and DZ Bank, established RL1, a jointly owned private blockchain network designed for regulated digital money and tokenized assets.
• Cloudflare introduced digital wallets equipped with the x402 protocol, enabling autonomous AI agents to pay for APIs and digital goods with stablecoin micropayments.
• A Kansai Electric Power subsidiary now allows users to convert utility loyalty points into the yen-pegged stablecoin JPYC.
• The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) deployed an Avalanche-based verification platform for secure national academic credentials.
• Aave plans to deprecate 50 underperforming asset reserves and fully shut down deployments across six networks, affecting roughly $98 million in supplied assets.
• A critical security vulnerability in Coldcard hardware wallets led to the theft of approximately 1,816 BTC (nearly $114 million) across four waves starting July 30.

Weekly DeFi Index

This week, the market cap, volume, and volatility indices decreased -5.68%, -4.37%, and -39.36%, respectively.

• Ethena (ENA) and Hyperliquid (HYPE) unlocked 171.88 million ENA ($15.8 million) and 433,000 HYPE ($24.2 million) tokens, respectively.
• Lido (LDO) faced pressure as Ethereum proposed EIP-8361, which would eliminate staking rewards once staked ETH hits 50% of network supply (roughly $112 billion) , raising concerns across liquid staking protocols.
• Aave (AAVE) plans to deprecate 50 underperforming asset reserves and fully shut down deployments across six networks, affecting roughly $98 million in supplied assets.

Chart of the Week

In July, DEX spot volume reached a record 23.9% relative to CEX volume. This milestone occurred despite an overall market contraction: while DEX volume fell 11% month-over-month to $175.7 billion, its lowest since September 2024, CEX volume declined even more. Uniswap led the DEX market, gaining over $53 billion in volume and capturing over 30% of market share, driven by the protocol’s chain expansion and new updates.

News Highlights

• Ethereum developers proposed EIP-8361, which would eliminate staking rewards once staked ETH hits 50% of network supply (roughly $112 billion). Founders of Aave and ether.fi pushed back against the proposed "yield burn," arguing it would hinder ecosystem growth and create complex tax issues.
• Circle named BlackRock, Visa, and DTCC as founding validators for Arc, its upcoming permissioned L1 blockchain.
• Ten European financial institutions, including ABN AMRO and DZ Bank, established RL1, a jointly owned private blockchain network designed for regulated digital money and tokenized assets. The move aims to reduce infrastructure fragmentation and standardize distributed ledger technology across Europe’s institutional markets.
• Mastercard launched a pilot program with Borderless.xyz to integrate its Crypto Credential framework into cross-border stablecoin payments, prioritizing stringent identity verification.
• Trade.xyz, an onchain perpetuals operator on Hyperliquid, announced it will fully reimburse users impacted by an abnormal liquidation event on its SK Hynix contract on July 27. The contract's mark price dropped nearly 19%, falling from $1,127.90 to $917.25, triggered by an executed trade on an external venue that was relayed to Trade.xyz’s oracle by multiple independent data providers.
• Web infrastructure provider Cloudflare introduced digital wallets equipped with the x402 protocol, enabling autonomous AI agents to pay for APIs and digital goods with stablecoin micropayments.
• A Kansai Electric Power subsidiary launched a feature allowing users to convert utility loyalty points into JPYC, a regulated yen-pegged stablecoin operating on the Polygon network.
• The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) deployed an Avalanche-based verification platform for secure national academic credentials.
• A critical security vulnerability in Coldcard hardware wallets led to the theft of approximately 1,816 BTC (nearly $114 million) across four waves starting July 30. The exploit targets devices running a specific March 2021 firmware build that erroneously routed seed generation to a predictable software randomizer instead of the secure hardware random number generator. This flaw allowed attackers to reproduce private keys offline and sweep funds from affected single-key addresses.

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